Rose Ensemble explores his life with music readings

The Rose Ensemble, from St. Paul, Minn., is an early music group that presents a variety of thematic concerts. Artistic director Jordan Sramek is standing third from left in the back.

St. Francis of Assisi may be one of the most familiar figures in religious history, but through music, the Rose Ensemble hopes to shed new light on his life and legacy.

Founded by artistic director and tenor Jordan Sramek in 1996, the St. Paul, Minn.-based 12-voice chorus devotes itself largely to early music, singing thematic concerts all over the world.

“My approach has been choosing an historical event or political figure, a political idea, a range of spiritual ideas or even geography. Music can provide a great foundation for understanding,” Sramek says.

In choosing St. Francis for Friday’s show at the South Orange Performing Arts Center, Sramek hoped to flesh out the image of the saint who often appears as a garden statue.

St. Francis was born the son of a wealthy merchant. After going to war, he renounced his riches for a life of poverty and had a vision that led him to found the Franciscan order. He was named a saint while still alive and is the patron of animals and the environment.

“He was such a small, frail person, but he had this huge output and influence not only on his followers but on a massive portion of Europe,” says Sramek. “The kind of information we have about him makes him more human — he’s not this kind of inaccessible, supernatural creature but a very real person.”

The program titled “Il Poverello” — “the poor one,” as St. Francis was known — ranges from simple, spiritual folk songs in the Florentine dialect used in 13th and 14th century Italy to intricate, polyphonic Renaissance choral music and boisterous, upbeat instrumental pieces from the Umbrian and Tuscan countryside (Sramek says a great tradition of percussion existed there).

The program will also use early versions of the tambourine and hurdy gurdy along with bagpipes, harp and strings.

“It’s got a fantastic variety of exotic instruments and sounds alongside the more serene landscape of voices,” Sramek says.

Sramek traveled to Assisi to discover the pieces that will be performed. Among his most intriguing finds were songs that combined advanced lyrical poetry with tunes easy enough for the public to learn quickly. These songs were in a style similar to Gregorian chant, the meditative music that first drew Sramek into his area of expertise and led him to start the Rose Ensemble.

“I had fallen in love with that time in Western history when harmonies first started being used,” he says. “I discovered that unless I started my own ensemble, I was probably not going to be able to sing that kind of music for a living.”

Also recorded on a CD available through the ensemble’s website, roseensemble.org, some pieces in the “Il Poverello” collection require a soloist to lead a chant and others involve complex layers of voices. Some illustrate the more fantastical elements of St. Francis’ story — his receiving of the stigmata, his ability to levitate — while others explain his significance to the church or offer words of praise.

Throughout the concert, readings about St. Francis — including a selection from Dante’s “Inferno” that medieval bagpiper Isacco Columbo will put down his instrument to read — will complement the music.

“The goal is to gain information about Francis in a very entertaining, humorous way meant to extol the joyfulness and the lightness of his life,” Sramek says.

Ronni Reich: (973) 392-1726 or rreich@starledger.com

The Rose Ensemble: Il Poverello, Medieval and Renaissance Music for St. Francis of Assisi